How Did Leonard Cohen Become a Punchline for Young Female Singers?

Analyzing the deeper spiritual and literary implications of Boygenius' "Leonard Cohen" and Sabrina Carpenter's "Dumb & Poetic."

In one case, he is a mix of wise and a little ridiculous:

Leonard Cohen once said,
"There's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in."
And I am not an old man having an existential crisis
At a Buddhist monastery writing horny poetry,
But I agree,
I never thought you'd happen to me.

In another, he is the idol of a “dumb and poetic” guy:

Gold star for highbrow manipulation,
And "love everyone" is your favorite quotation.
Try to come off like you're soft and well-spoken,
Jack off to lyrics by Leonard Cohen.

Leonard Cohen, the much-admired Canadian songwriter and poet with the singular voice, died in 2016, but he seems to have undergone a bit of an image shift, particularly among young women, if these recent lyrics from the all-female supergroup Boygenius and pop star Sabrina Carpenter are any indication. Certain artists, especially white and male ones, become unfortunate status indicators for young men flailing about for an identity, a way of, in particular, showing potential sexual partners how cool they are, often by mansplaining these artists to their potential sexual partners. In fact, even way back in the 2000s, a cute guy told me, after I invited him to my karaoke birthday party, that he wasn’t really interested in any music that wasn’t Leonard Cohen.

This relationship did not, as you can probably guess, pan out. But this incident has been on my mind as I have noticed Cohen pop up as something of a punchline in recent music from young, smart, female lyricists. Alas, Cohen seems to have lately snatched top-dog status in this category from Bob Dylan, who has long been the king of status-symbol fandom for young men.

But Dylan is a more polarizing figure. He has a love-hate relationship with his own fans. He’s an absolute genius who has been known to come off as a jerk in his public persona. He’s a phony—by which I mean he’s a constructed persona, a modern-day Lord Byron who changed his name from Robert Allen Zimmerman—who passed himself off as the gold standard in authenticity in mass-market music. And I’m saying all of that as a fan of his work.

So it’s interesting to me to see a guy I unequivocally admire, a Zen Buddhist, generationally great lyricist, and totally unique entity, be summarily dismissed by a new generation of women. I wanted to dig deeper to figure out why, and the answers I found touched on profound truths about fandom, relationships, and Buddhism.

What I’m trying to say is that I love, love Boygenius and Sabrina Carpenter, and these records. These tracks are among my favorites on albums I adored. But also: Leonard Cohen really was great. He was a poet who turned himself into a songwriter in the 1960s, a time when a poet could feasibly make this kind of pivot into the hot folk scene. His talk-singing in his distinctively low voice distinguished him from his peers, as did his thoughtful lyrics, philosophical and spiritual underpinnings, and turns of phrase.

This is most famously embodied in his stunning song “Hallelujah,” which has perhaps worn out its welcome through endless covers and soundtrack placements, but nonetheless remains one of the greatest laments ever written about the true meaning of love. (“Love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.” Bonus points for rhyming phrases like “knew ya” with “hallelujah.”) But he had many, many other excellent songs—“So Long, Marianne,” “Bird on the Wire,” “Chelsea Hotel No. 2,” “Who by Fire,” “Take This Longing,” and probably lots more that I don’t know. I want to faint sometimes from his economy of words and illustrative imagery.

This legendary talent naturally led the Boygenius dig to upset some folks. A lot of people in the Leonard Cohen Reddit were not happy. Vulture’s Zach Schonfeld wrote, “why quote Cohen at all if you’re only going to cheapen the sentiment while adding little insight of your own?” This struck me at first as valid. But, while we’ll never know what Cohen would have thought of the song, I’d argue that it’s ultimately a tribute to him. (It is, after all, called “Leonard Cohen,” when it could have been called “Never Thought You’d Happen to Me.”) The storytelling is exquisitely compact, in the Cohen tradition, with a first verse featuring one person saying to the other, as they drive on the interstate, “If you love me, you will listen to this song.” The second person doesn’t tell the first that they’re driving the wrong way, so serious does she take the request. It adds an hour to the drive, but “it gave us more time to embarrass ourselves tellin’ stories we wouldn’t tell anyone else.” This leads to the Cohen quote about the light getting in, a line from his song “Anthem,” which in that song proceeds the couplet, “Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect offering.” We don’t know that these two lovers are listening to “Anthem,” but I bet they are.

Both “Leonard Cohen” and “Anthem” are about the beauty of imperfections. And I would posit that Boygenius immediately undermining him right after quoting him does serve a purpose: For one, it’s a way for the narrator to play it a little cool, to say, essentially, “I know this is corny, but …” For another, it reminds me of the way that in Zen koans—the little teaching stories we use to further our discussion and understanding of Buddhist concepts—there is often a bit where someone immediately undermines the lesson that was just expressed, and sometimes even makes fun of it. For example, first they tell you, metaphorically, that a flower is the dharma; then they tell you to smash that flower, throw it away, it means nothing, it’s a joke, and, in fact, the Buddha himself is the biggest joker of them all. It’s a way of discouraging attachments to doctrine, to your thoughts or others’ thoughts, to anything but the truth of what is happening right now.

One koan literally says, “If you meet the Buddha, kill him.” That gives you an idea of the vibe I’m talking about.

For this reason, I would guess that Leonard Cohen would get “Leonard Cohen” and appreciate its punchline. In another of his songs, “Going Home,” a solid Buddhist song, he calls himself “a lazy bastard living in a suit” who “will speak these words of wisdom, like a sage, a man of vision, though he knows he’s really nothing but the brief elaboration of a tube.” An old man having an existential crisis? I think he could handle that. And sometimes his poetry is horny, which he’d have to agree is factually true. I love this piece I stumbled across on a site called The Jesuit Post: “Few songwriters are bold enough to lob sarcastic shots at the high priest of pathos, but for Boygenius it is not about ridicule. True and profound things are not true and profound because of who said them or why, but because the thing is true and profound itself. Origins are sometimes surprising.” This site may be offering Jesuit insights into culture and life, but this is a pretty Zen thought, too.

The Carpenter song reference, obviously, isn’t quite as deep. Here, it’s not really Cohen who’s being mocked, but the kind of guy who uses Cohen fandom as a substitute for a real personality. (The kind of guy who The Jesuit Post seems to be pointing a finger at, in fact.) It is, in some ways, a testament to Cohen, even if it means that a portion of his fans are the “wrong” kind of fans who don’t necessarily even get his work, but get that it’s deep and meaningful in some way. Poets, indie musicians, and famous Buddhists alike often suffer this fate of the bad fan, and there are certainly worse fates. To be so big that you become a cliché is a sign of major success.

As Rob Sheffield wrote in his review of the album for Rolling Stone:

The late Montreal poet-sage would have been totally honored by this tribute, just as he would have enjoyed Boygenius’ equally harsh “Leonard Cohen” last year. Cohen loved mocking male vanity (including his own) the way these songwriters do, and he’d appreciate how Sabrina turns her romantic woes into barbs like “Save all your breath for your floor meditation” and “I promise the mushrooms aren’t changing your life.” Also, they both have a flair for outlandish rhymes—somewhere, Cohen is probably kicking himself for not stretching out “Hallelujah” with “dream-come-true ya” and “Mountain Dew ya.”

Look, no one has fallen harder for the poetic and the spiritual-leaning than I have. Some of them are posers, and some of them are the real deal. Fifteen years ago, I started messaging with a guy on an online dating site because his profile said he taught meditation to prisoners at Sing Sing. We’re still together, we practice Zen together, he still teaches meditation to prisoners at Sing Sing, and my life is all the better for it. We both think Leonard Cohen is cool.

It's good to look for the poetic and the spiritual. I have high hopes that Sabrina will meet her real-deal one of these days, and she will say, “I never thought you’d happen to me.”